This Page is about my home made dust collector.I made this in the summer of 2005 and it works pretty well. It could use a little more pressure, but it flows a good volume of air and filters quite well. I build the collector from salvaged materials. I spent a little on some switches and filters. In total I spent under $20 to make this, not including piping.Contact-me if you would like to ask a question about the unit. More detail is below. Click on an image below to show a better quality image.I also made a wood buffer, click here to see it.

Brad Harding, HardingPens.com.

Front view - the unit is 41" high, 38" wide, 16" deep, and was sized to fit between my workbench and lathe bench. The wood is a mixture of particle board, chip board and plywood, all scrap I had lying around.

The squirrel cage fan came from an old furnace that I salvaged when I helped renovate our old church office. Pulled the fan before the furnace was dumped into the bin. The fan has four speeds hence the on/off switch and three two-pole speed control switches.

The collector is a four stage unit, The first two stages dump the air into large chambers so the larger chips fall out. Below you can see the clean-out door open to show the bottom of the first two stages. Notice the larger chips in the first stage on the right.

The third stage (below) is a dust bag. The old boot laces keep it in place (below). I have since upgraded the bag to use a 1-micron dust bag available for a commercial collector unit. The bag mounts to the modified pail (below-right)

The fourth stage (to left) is a series of furnace filters. I was expecting these to clog badly, but I have only had to shake them out about once a year. The bag is working well and I am not getting much fine dust in the outlet .

Here you can see the original side outlet and the 3" ABS drain pipping and 4" dryer tube used for the main inlet piping. The flex pipe goes to the lathe - see below-left. Anyone interested in more detail see the sketches below-right.

Dryer flex pipe and a blast gate are used to collect the dust off the lathe. I have also plumbed in piping to the sander, drill press, bandsaw, and table saw. I also added a floor sweep behind the lathe (below).

Harding Pens and Woodturnings

One-of-a-Kind Fine Writing Instruments and Turned Treasures

Dust Collector

View of fan and motor from inside, near the dust bag

I cut the bottom out of a pail, wedged that in a cut hole and this provided the mounting for the dust bag. See above.

Above is a view from inside looking up. This is the two inlet pipes and the first deflector. There are 2 deflectors to slow larger chips and get them to fall out of the air flow. Below is the inlets shown from outside looking down on the pipes.

I modified the dust collector outlet with a deflector / defuser plate (below). This redirected the flow away from the nearby lathe. The airflow was blowing dust into my eyes.